Jerry Jones avoids question on Colin Kaepernick, but says he has 'respect' for Nike

Jerry Jones avoids question on Colin Kaepernick, but says he has 'respect' for Nike

If we’ve learned one thing about Jerry Jones during his time as an NFL owner, it’s that he loves to talk. If you ask Jones a question, he’ll almost always give you a lengthy answer, and sometimes, that answer might not even make sense.

However, it appears there is one thing that Jones won’t talk about, and that’s Colin Kaepernick. During a radio interview with 105.3 The Fan in Dallas on Tuesday, Jones was asked to give his thoughts on Nike’s decision to choose Kaepernick as one of the faces for the 30th anniversary of the company’s “Just Do It” campaign.

“First of all, I do have tremendous respect for Nike as a company and for Phil Knight and just everything they’ve meant to sports, so I do have a lot of respect for that,” Jones said, via the Dallas Morning News. “Because I’m in court. I’m being sued individually as well as a team, this is litigation and I’m not going to be able to comment on it.”

If Jones ever does decide to comment on Kaepernick’s situation with Nike, it will be interesting to see what has to say. Jones is diametrically opposed to Kaepernick’s way of protesting, which Nike is celebrating. Since Kaepernick started kneeling during the national anthem in August 2016 — to protest racial inequality and police brutality against minorities — the Cowboys have been one of the few teams in the NFL that hasn’t had a single protester yet, and that’s not by coincidence.

Jones has made it clear on multiple occasions that he doesn’t want his players kneeling. Back in July, the team even hinted that they would cut any players who decided to kneel. With Nike now backing Kaepernick, it will be interesting to see if Jones changes his mind about Kaepernick or Nike.

On the other hand, even if Jones is unhappy with Nike’s choice, he might not ever admit it and that’s because he has close ties with the company. A big reason Nike got into business with the NFL was because of Jones. After the Cowboys signed an individual team deal with the shoe company in 1995, the NFL ended up signing its own deal with the company a few weeks later. After that 1995 deal went down, Jones has basically been wearing Nikes shoes since then. The Cowboys owner even had a special pair at his Hall of Fame ceremony in August 2017 that was given to him by Nike founder Phil Knight.